I was excited to hear my name at the end of a special feature on NPR this morning. It was a 2nd Window Production on Voice of the Troubles: 25 Years After the Irish Hunger Strike. Wow. They played quite a few songs.

They played The Dubliner's Tabby Cats recording of "Cats Chasing Butterflies". That's Cedric of the Bedlam Bards on fiddle. They also played "The Parting Glass" from Soul of a Harper.

But that's not all. The Brobdingnagian Bards were also on the show. They played a short clip"My Irish Valentine" from A Celtic Renaissance Wedding at 7:30 into the second podcast (yes, the show was podcasted). And I just noticed that melody sorta reminds me of "Featherlight" from Songs of the Muse.

by Julian Jensen

Since we are on the topic of removing pants: My first encounter with the kilt phenomenon this Pennsic.

Anyone who has ever worn a real kilt knows instantly that there is no dignity to be salvaged from kilts. I am not talking about those wimpy little kilts that you simply buy and strap on. Bah! I am talking the real deal here. Why do we wear them? Because the women want us to. Actually, a pretty good reason. So after much consideration and soul-searching (and a few friendly polls) I decided to join the ranks of kilt wearers.

What were the Scots thinking? Were they even thinking at all? No wonder they got the shit kicked out of them on a regular basis. They were probably late for all their battles. I think it is all a huge cosmic misunderstanding. Someone on the armourarchive has this tagline that I think explains the kilt admirably: Kilt is a verb, as in 'I done kilt him'

Somehow women got us all fooled into believing it is actually a skirt and supposedly soooo sexy. Oh, and that guys wearing a skirt are extra cool.

First, there is the shocking purchase of the kilt itself. See, there is no such thing as a period kilt. It is actually not a garment but rather 10 yards or more of very itchy wool. I know the sheep were glad to get rid of it. Once the price shock has faded and a normal color has returned to you face you break down and buy the darn thing under the watchful and appreciative eye of your lady on account of whom this whole escapade came to be in the first place.

Lugging the mass of fabric back to your pavilion you are now faced with an even greater affront to you highly esteemed dignity. The kilt application.

A kilt requires some serious preparation to put on. First, you put down a belt. On top of this belt you then lay the evil fabric itself. It must then be carefully pleated. Yeah, pleated. Makes you feel really warrior-like and battle ready. "Don't start without me, guys, I am pleating my kilt!" The proper length of fabric must be left at the ends and folded properly.

Now comes the real humiliation. In order to actually get the infernal garment to stay on your body you are now required to lay down, take of your pants, and underwear if worn, and then roll around lifting up the ends of the kilt. This procedure is invariably observed and judged by your lady's smug eyes and smirking face. She can't believe she got you to do this. All she had to do was mention Liam Neeson and Mel Gibson and off you went to the store. And now, here you are, 20 minutes later with you dangly bits flopping around crazily while trying to get the thing to not look like you are wearing hotpants.

Now the fun really starts. Having properly festooned yourself with yet another belt, a dagger and a huge claymore hanging on your back from a baldric you feel ready to face the world of Pennsic head on hoping that you won't meet any really short people. Walking around you think of all the advice people gave you regarding your thighs rubbing together. Somehow you couldn't get yourself to smear olive oil on the inside of your thighs and walk around Pennsic leaving a trail like a slug. This is when you realize that it is not the thighs you have to worry about. It is the fact that in a matter of minutes you will find yourself in possession of a hairless scrotum. As much as this may intrigue your lady you really don't want the other Scots to get the wrong idea. Not to mention upsetting the sheep. Since you are already tired from walking back up from the bog you decide to take a quick rest on the slope in front of the Spotted Pony and consider this new disturbing turn of events.

This is the moment when you realize a few other facts regarding the kilts. You sit and realize how wonderfully cool it is. So cool… You lean your head back and relax for a moment. You look at the people passing by. They are all looking at your kilt. Maybe this thing isn't so bad after all.

You look down and realize that you are at this point completely and fully expose to the environment. Not just a little exposed. Not the kind of exposure that could be explained away as a trick of light. Part of your anatomy is severely and irrevocably protruding into the hot Pennsic day.

You suddenly remember that somebody once explained to you why the Scots have those pouches hanging down in front of the kilt. You lean forwards and scramble to once again enclose the offending member. At this point you also realize that sitting down with a heavy claymore on your back has solidly staked you to the ground. Your embarrassment now closely matches the entire getting-dressed event.

You hastily retreat back to your pavilion hoping no one saw your face. Which is probably a good assumption in this case. You take off the kilt while shaking your head. You vow to never wear dreadful thing again. You then look up at your lady and notices how she looks at you removing the kilt and realize one thing: Yeah, you'll probably wear it again.

---

Story by Julian Jensen, a patron of Pennsic, the big SCA war that takes place every year in Pennsylvania. Used by permission of the author.

I hate it when music goes the way of the Dodo Bird.

I was watching The Legend of Zorro when the Pinkertons were mentioned. I couldn't remember much about them, so I went over to Wikipedia and read up on them. I followed several links, including one that went to The Molly Maguires.

One of the first tape someone lent me when we started playing Irish music was about The Molly Maguires... well, mining songs in general. But I just made a copy of a copy and thought the group was called The Molly Maguires until I met a band in TN who owns the copyright for a band named The Molly Maguires.

*breath*

So that page listed a group called The Irish Balladeers who wrote a song called "The Sons of Molly". So I searched there and found that Chuck Rogers from PA was the author of the song and a member of the group The Irish Balladeers.

So finally, I found that The Irish Balladeers were the authors and performers of this much loved album of mine. But the sucky thing is... the album is no longer in production! That bites hard. Cuz it was an awesome album. I haven't, yet, learned their songs, but there's a few I would love to learn if I could understand the lyrics.

I wonder if I can get ahold of someone from the band?

Hmm. Ah well, Kathleen Rogers is apparently the daughter of Chuck Rogers. She is now the owner of The Banshee, a pub in Scanton, PA.

Some Liam Clancy's website, I found that the album was released in 1968 on the Avoca label.

The band members were mostly brothers: Chuck Rogers, Bob Rogers, John Rogers, and their brother-in-law, Ted Andrews.

The recording also featured their father, Charles, Sr. on accordion and Eddie Lennihan. Avoca Records is no more. I wonder if the band is able to re-release the album independently?

There's more information about the band at Mudcat.

Fantastic! The email address for Bob Rogers worked.

THE MYSTERY REVEALED
Well, after lots of searching, the disappeared band is not so gone. In fact, The Irish Balladeers have seven albums and are still playing weekly at The Banshee. It looks like they are still selling their albums at the pub. I even found an MP3 of theirs that I downloaded a long time ago from MP3.com. So now I just need to see about purchasing their CDs.

Words by Marc Gunn and Lorella Loftus. This fake advertisement was created for the Renaissance Festival Podcast.

NARRATOR: Do you suffer from lumps in your groin? Are your armpits swelling up? You may be have the bubonic plague?

MAN: Betty, I got something under my arm?

WOMAN: Away and boil your hed!

MAN: Boil! Aye it's a boil. It's HUGE!

WOMAN: Don't be stupid.

MAN: I' is. It's got hairs on it and it's all purple.

WOMAN: Ahhhh… Oh Jimmy. I think it's the plague.

NAR: That's right. Jimmy is suffering from the bubonic plague. Luckily, there's a new ointment to soothe away Jimmy's pestilence-PlagueAway Potion is just what Jimmy needs. Made from the finest and freshest organic material, like ground boar snout [pig squeals], saliva of Werewolf, giant's toenail, and revolutionary flakes of leper skin. Now available at your local apothecary.

APOTHECARY: Good morrow, mistress. How may I help you?

WOMAN: Good morrow [whispering] My husband's got… he's got…

APOTHECARY: Ahhh. No need to say anymore. [lowers voice] We just got a new order of PlagueAway. It's a miracle cure.

WOMAN: Oh! Thank you, thank you!

NAR: Betty went home and applied PlagueAway to Jimmy's boils. In just three days, Jimmy felt relief.

JIMMY: O Betty. Come to bed. And bring the PlagueAway.

WOMAN: Aye Jimmy.

NAR: Jimmy lived to the ripe old age of 32. And you can too with PlagueAway, the pestilence potion.

Tonight, I went salsa dancing. I haven't been dancing in a long time. It was exhausting, but a heckuva lot of fun. I need to go dancing more regularly when I'm in Austin.

Last week, I started looking up swing dancing. The big thing is I want to do social dancing. I want an opportunity to meet more people. So this was fun. I got to dance with a number of ladies though not nearly as many as I'd like to. That's one thing I like about Ballroom dancing socials over other styles. There are some slower dances so you can catch your breath better. Salsa dancing is non-stop fast dancing.

Though I must say salsa dancing seems a misnomer. Rather, here in Austin, it seems to define Latin dancing in general. There was Mambo, Cha Cha, Samba, Merengue, and Salsa all combined in the music of the evening. I thought there'd be lessons, but there weren't quite. There was an instructor who individually danced with various people wanting "lessons", but they weren't what I expected. I wanted to learn some moves. I'm sooo rusty with dancing. But that's not quite what it was. It was more open social dancing with someone who occasionally instructed.

I figure there are a lot more opportunities for swing dancing in Austin, but really don't know for sure. It's time to review the various opportunities and pursue them.

So here are some of the dance resources in Austin.

Ballroom Dancing

• Austin Ballroom Dancers - weekly social dances
  
• Go Dance
• Argentine Tango in Austin
• Arthur Murray Dance Studios
• University of Texas Ballroom Dance Club
• Dance International
• Learn to Dance

Swing Dancing

• Austin Swing Syndicate
  
• Four on the Floor

Salsa Dancing

• Salsa Austin
  
• Austin Salsa YahooGroup
  

I started learning "Heart and Soul" on the autoharp. And since it wasn't until college that I realized there were lyrics to the tune, I've always been enamoried with the idea of learning the vocal version so I am. But as I practiced and everytime I sang it, I could hear the voice of Jimmy Durante. And my imitation wasn't too bad. So I've spent the last couple o'days trying to capture me singing like Jimmy Durante singing "Heart and Soul" on the autoharp.

The toughest part is the playing the solo on the autoharp. I have a good recording of me sounding like him, but the solo isn't quite there. So if I can get it soon, I'm gonna stick with the performance I have which sounds pretty cool. Not quite there, but pretty decent.

It's kinda funny imitating people. I'm not really good at imitating people themselves. But I'm good at imitating imitators.

For instance, Jimmy Durante. I had no idea who he was until yesterday. But I've known his voice all my life. Ralph the Mouth from Happy Days used to do his "Ha cha cha". Spike from Tom and Jerry used his voice, as did Doggie Daddie from Hanna-Barbera. And he was the narrator in the Rankin-Bass animated TV special, Frosty the Snowman.

You also may've heard his version of "Time Goes By" and "Make Someone Happy" from the movie Sleepless in Seattle. And "You Made Me Love You" from You've Got Mail. Seems like there's another Meg Ryan movie that had Jimmy Durante singing too, but I can't remember what.

Anyway, when I get a final recording, I'll play it on my Pub Songs Podcast.

My Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers CD has been a hit since it was released. Now you can help it gain five thousand new fans.

When I first released it, it number one CD sold on CDBaby for a couple weeks. Today, I was checking out the Top Selling CDs in various categories on CDBaby and the album is listed as the #10 Most-Popular Spoken Word CD on CD Baby. This category includes all the Comedy CDs on the site!

Every August, CD Baby holds a contest to promote their top-selling CDs. The top 100 CDs will have a song included on a compilation CD that goes out to over 5,000 of their customers. The top 10 songs are included are included as audio tracks. The rest are MP3s. The CD should easily make the Top 100. But can it reach the Top 10? I think so.

To achieve that, I need to sell at least 125 copies. So if you ever wanted a copy of the CD, or wanted to give one to a cat lover. Now is your chance. To aid you in this endeavor, I knocked THREE DOLLARS off the CD sales price. Buy more than one copy and you'll save an additional 20%! Plus, there's a secret URL in each CD insert that will give you access to a free bonus MP3 that I couldn't add to the album because it's about Harry Potter!

Buy Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers

Thank you for all your help. And if you could do one more wee favor and repost this for your Celtic and cat lover friends, I'd purr for you! :)

Mreow!

After my recent blog entry on busking in Italy, I got a reply from a fellow Renaissance festival entertainer, Vince Conaway. He had this to say about Italian busking:

I just ran across your July 16 post on Italian busking. I'm going to be busking in Italy next June and July based on trials I made while touring Europe with the Aerial Angels this month. Regulations are really lenient (this from talking to both buskers and cops), with "permit" laws very slackly enforced. The penalty for busking without a permit is..."move along", and is generally only used against buskers who are deemed a nuisance. Also, the police do not enforce permits, and the officials who do don't have powers to fine or arrest.

As far as effectiveness, I'd recommend doing some busking at home first. Faires are the obvious beginning. Also, busking in downtown Cincinnati isn't all that different from busking in Florence, and the key skills of getting a crowd and getting them to give are the same. The biggest challenge I faced in Italy was that the audiences I had were really unimpressed by Celtic music, but fortunately they really liked my original material.

I would definitely recommend it, but you might want to give it a trial before going full-on. I'm thrilled that I did the busking while overseas for other reasons (performing at festivals with the Angels) because it gave me the chance to experiment without needing to live off my efforts. I just wish I'd brought more CD's - the ten I did bring went very quickly (I'm looking into alternative packaging to make it easier to bring them overseas next year, and IIRC - I'm going to double check - customs in Rome didn't care about merchandise while the customs officials elsewhere, particularly England, give you the third degree over any hint you might do any sort of work locally). Take a vacation, bring the autoharp, and give it a shot!

-Vince

Thanks a million Vince! That is some great information.

I definitely need to start with just some local busking before I'll be ready to do so in Europe. Need to get my busking chops up. Outside of faires, I've only been busking once in Heidelberg, Germany, quite timidly in college. But I wasn't playing in a scheduled location so was asked to move along.

CD sales are definitely a big plus for buskers. I understand in Italy CDs are legally mandated to sell for 20 or 30 euros (I forget which), basically $30-40. Course the cost of living is high. But that'll definitely allow you to survive quite well in Europe.

Even though most CD's in Italy are pretty expensive (20-30 E), I was selling (and will sell) mine for 10. Selling cheaply to many has treated me well, especially since most of my customers were American tourists who would find 20 euros excessive.

Feel free to post my comments, it's my pleasure. I'm planning my next trip already, and if you find anything really helpful I'd appreciate anything you could forward on. See you in a few months!

Always great information. Thanks Vince! Check him out at www.VinceConaway.com and on Myspace at myspace.com/vinceconaway.

Love to hear comments from other buskers too.

I have to say, I'm more anxious than ever after hearing him write. I just need to get out there and start busking. I find myself just very apprehensive about it though, and I'm not sure why.

Looking for Podsafe music? I have a lot of podsafe music available, and more and more podcasts are finding it and sharing it with others. If you have a podcast and would like to do the same. Join this growing list of great podcasters.

• Antecubital Liposuction
• AudioAttitude / Procrasticast
• Daily Source Code
• Dear Sigmund, Don't Panic
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• Get Jacked
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• Information Salad
• KnitTunes
• Life Science Nexus Podcast
  
• LoveHouse Radio
• MacCast
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• Paul and Lynn Show
• Pod Playlist
• Podsafe Comedy Countdown
• Procrasticast
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• Tea Lovers Room TeaCast
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• The Bears Grove
• The Gigcast
• The Multiple Sclerosis Blog Podcast
• The Musicians Cooler
• The Traveling Juke Joint
• The Write Stuff
• World of Fantasy Podcast
• Xens Show
  

After all my involvement in the podcasting, I was invited to be a speaker on the panel at DragonCon. The panel asks are you a writer, musician, game designer, or trying to promote your brand or grow an audience? Learn the tricks to get a wider audience!

I'll be on a panel with such podcasting gurus as Les Howard, Mur Lafferty, Stephen Euin Cobb, Marc Gunn, JM Campbell, and others. This is particularly exciting for me. I don't often enjoy being on panels unless I know I have plenty to say. And when it comes to marketing and promotion, I have plenty to say. Don't believe me, check out The Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine I publish.

Friday, September 1, 2006
Podcasting for Promotion @ 4:00 PM
DragonCon Sci Fi Convention
Hilton POD

If you're interested in podcasting to promote yourself of your business, don't miss this panel!

We will also perform in The Parsec Awards: Sci Fi Podcasting Awards Ceremony. Details of that are coming soon.

I never really think of "themes" when I book gigs. But more and more whenever I put together a solo show, I like to give it a theme and then see how I can fit it. Take for instance my latest solo show at Things Celtic:

Sun, August 13, 2006
Things Celtic @ 3PM
1806 W. 35th Street
Austin, TX 78703

This time I'm not entirely sure. Right now, I have another sinus infection. So if my voice is as bad as it is right now, then I'll prolly do an instrumental show. But assuming my voice is back in shape by then, I think a nice set for summer is in order.

A set for summer... hmm... I'll have to think about what songs that'll include. Check out Irish Song Lyrics website.

Course, this is the really annoying thing. I look at every tour we've done so far and I've ended up on antibiotics. I think it's safe to say, heavy touring will not be in my future. That means, it will be more expensive flying to venues, but at least a might stay a wee bit healthy.

Irish Songs & Lyrics. That's the official title of my Irish song lyrics website. The Irish Songs & Lyrics website began nearly six years ago. Originally, it was the Brobdingnagian Bards' Celtic Lyrics website. The goal was to feature Celtic songs, lyrics, chords, MP3s and sheet music (though sheet music never made it on the site) so people could learn songs the way I did, but ear. Our Celtic Lyrics website was focused on songs that we performed. So later, I decided to expanded the website to include Irish song lyrics that we did not necessarily perform. Thus was born the the Irish Songs & Lyrics website.

Visit
Irish Songs & Lyrics

When the site first began, there were very few Celtic lyric websites. Probably the best was Cantaria. They had a nice collection of Irish songs popular among the SCA, plus audio clips. But I preferred streaming audio, and there were no chords to the songs. Playing an autoharp, that was something I considered important. So I decided to create our own Celtic lyric directory.

The Brobdingnagian Bards site grew wonderfully and brought many new fans into our fold from people who were searching for Celtic lyrics. The service we provided was important. But as it grew, we got requests for a couple songs we didn't play. Then we started performing more filk that didn't really fit into the Irish song lyric idea.

So in 2004, I started the Irish Songs & Lyrics directory. This site would continue with what the Brobdingnagian Bards' website had started, but I would add more Irish lyrics. Instead of fully produced music from the Brobdingnagian Bards, I decided I'd just record some solo songs, live, raw recordings so that people could hear what the songs sounded like. Thus was born the current incarnation.

The downside to the Irish Songs & Lyrics website is that I haven't had much time to really record all the songs I wanted to do. Consequently, the site hasn't grown nearly as fast as I wish it would. I'm almost tempted to add music from others, but I think having songs sound mostly the same is probably better overall.

One of the latest features of the Irish Songs & Lyrics website is that you can now download some MP3s from various websites and listen to them at your leisure thanks to services like iTunes.